Odi et Amor
by Ava Caita
Summary: Entry for the LJ comm 'Masked Ball'. Christine has unmasked Erik. This is after they both calm down. A lot.


**A/N: **This was originally written for the 'Masked Ball' community on Live Journal. It was in response to a request from 'ghostwritten2'. I may have stolen a few things from other interpretations, but tried very hard to stick to Leroux's version. Thanks go to Lady Goodman for the clutch beta. Please read & review.

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_La première fois que jamais j'ai vu ton visage, ton visage, ton visage, ton visage._

~ Ewan MacColl

Erik would not come near me. I smiled and cajoled, going so far as to throw his mask into the fire. Instead of looking at his face, I stared into the grate, watching the black leather crack and curl. When I thought I had no more tears to shed, they shocked me with their fierce presence. Then came the hiccups and shudders. From the corner of my vision, I saw that Erik cried as well. He handed me a torn strip of cloth, so careful to avoid catching my eyes. More careful to avoid touching my hand.

'No need, you see,' he said by way of explanation.

The material he had given me was not rough cotton but expensive silk. I took the make-shift handkerchief, making a sorry attempt to soak up the water and snot. How horrid I must look to him. Yes, that was my thought! It is my saving grace that I did not speak such a thing aloud. There were still torn bits of his skin under my nails from where he'd forced me to tear at his flesh. Suffering that horror again by his hands tonight kept me silent.

'Let us speak as civilized adults, my dear,' he said, moving to sit in the half-light of the remaining embers. I dared not watch the way it played upon his ravaged face.

Grabbing my water and soot-stained skirts, I stood and moved to sit nearer to him. The angle was such that I avoided looking directly at him. 'Yes,' I murmured, 'a civilized discussion.'

It was as if agreeing with him lifted some weight from his shoulders. He sat up on his cushion. He draped his long fingers along the back of the divan. Like everything else Erik owned, it was lush and handsome.

I commented on it at once. 'Where did you happen upon such a lovely piece of furniture?'

His hands grew stiff. They moved tentatively from the polished wood, slid down the embroidery, and disappeared. I thought perhaps he had not heard me, that I had blubbered instead of enunciating.

'Erik, dear,' I began again, 'where did you buy that divan?'

The voice that answered sounded so far away, as though it took all his concentration to find the words and then give them life. 'It once belonged to my mother.'

I cannot pretend that I understood immediately the horror he must have known as a child. Nor could I understand the reverence he held for both his father and his mother. That story would come much later in our time together. Like someone blind or rude, I pressed further.

'She had very aesthetic taste.'

He finished my misguided comment with, 'Indeed she did, for she fashioned my very first mask.'

I gasped a little at that, though Erik did not seem to notice. Or if he had noticed, he was too polite to admonish my rudeness. The mahogany clock that stood in the corner ticked boldly as the seconds turned to minutes. The silence lingered. What could I possibly say to a man I had only come to know was human a week past? My angel, or the idea of heavenly assistance, sat deep in the ashes of Erik's fireplace. Divinity turned into humanity. And such a cruel, no, monstrous human he resembled. It had happened so many times in my past that for once I thought a faery tale would come true. For once I deserved every happiness I never had growing up.

Finally, brought into the moment by the chiming clock as it announced midnight, Erik recovered his manners.

'Please, Christine, tell me a story of your mother.'

This shared pain and loss washed over me. We both longed for our mothers to be in our lives, as we had grown up while not growing up at all. Suddenly I did not know if Erik mocked my impertinence and sought to hurt me with that question, of if he truly wanted to know something of my childhood. Something that linked us as music always had.

'There is little to tell. She died when I was nearing my sixth year. The things I remember best are the way she made me laugh and how she smelled.' I felt my eyes glaze into memory. 'Lavender and freshly kneaded bread.'

'Rose water. Honey. The way sugar smells when you're close to burning it.'

My eyes focussed again. 'Pardon?'

'Rose water, honey, and cooked sugar. My mother smelled of those things,' Erik said again. He seemed to brush something near his malformed cheek. 'She tried her best to love me.'

A deep chasm broke inside me. The horror of his face could not come close to the horror of a mother turning her only child away. I had no children of my own, of course, but I knew of the love between a mother and child. No matter how deformed that child turned out to be a mother could not but help to love it. It. Had I compared Erik to a monster again? Even though I knew that monsters were real. Real and hardly any different in their needs and wants than myself. None of the creatures I had seen had ever looked as terrible as Erik, not even the daemons. Still, most of them were more terrified of me than terrifying. Erik was no different.

Blindly, trusting, I reached out my hand. Reached across the distance that separated us. A distance formed of both fear and distrust. Erik's hand appeared for less than the span between ticks on the clock. My mind imagined it lingered so close to my outstretched fingers that our body's heat had certainly touched. Melded. Then I remembered how cold Erik's hands had been.

As quickly as I'd stretched out my arm, I dropped it back into my lap.

'Erik,' I said, 'tell me one good thing from your childhood.'

His hands appeared again. They brushed at some invisible dust on his trousers and folded neatly in his lap. 'Erik would rather discuss you, Christine. After all,' he laughed a little, 'you are my guest.'

'What shall I tell you?'

'You can simply answer your own question,' he said quietly. 'Tell me one good thing from your childhood.'

Immediately I thought of the last Christmas I had spent with my mother, though I had not known at the time it would be my last. She had taught me a sweet lullaby that she promised I could sing to the infant Jesus. The lullaby issued from my lips then. My voice had changed so much since those innocent days that I found myself singing it an octave higher than I remembered.

As had happened so many times in the past, Erik joined my voice. He knew where the melody should go even better than I did, so I soon found myself following his lead. Unbecoming of a lyric soprano, I sung the harmony line guided by his melody. Our pianissimo turned into the brighter full sounds of fortissimo. Then the words, broken memories at first, escaped my mouth. Erik continued to sing with no clear words, only sharp feelings.

We might have continued this strange duet until well into morning if Erik had not abruptly stopped. 'That is enough singing for tonight. Tomorrow I shall not allow you hold one note.'

The magic of the moment dissipated like so much dew in the morning sun. A sun I longed to see, if only to remember that I was not being held against my will for a secret I now shared with Erik.

The ticks and tocks of the clock resumed their place as the loudest sound in the room.

Eventually, Erik broke the silence. 'What does that song mean to you? How does it represent goodness in your childhood?'

I swallowed and promised myself I would not cry again this long night. 'It was the last song my mother taught me to sing. She began teaching me in the summer. She was always happiest during the long, brilliant summer days. When the cold winter nights came to our little village, she continued to sing it. Somehow it felt as though she had brought the warmth and light from the earlier months into the vast bleakness of winter.

'She promised I could sing it for the tiny God-child on his birthday. She had fashioned me a green velvet dress. My father had bought some shoes from a neighbouring child, now to big for them. Every night in December, I would hum the song back to my mother. She would correct me in places and praise me in others. As I tell you this, I cannot remember what her face looked like. My father always said I looked like her.'

Erik trembled. I willed myself not to ask if it was my face that made him react so or his own. The answer seemed plainly writ in mangled flesh and bone.

The End


End file.
